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San Francisco’s growing pains

28 December, 2013

The mid-Market area, one of S.F’s most crime ridden neighborhoods became the hub of tech companies after Mayor Edwin Lee in 2011 pushed through a payroll tax holiday for companies in mid-Market bringing in Twitter and 16 other companies, bringing thousands of jobs.

The “New Silicon Valley”

The technological heart of California has always been Silicon Valley, a cluster of big cities and small towns located southeast of San Francisco. The last two years, the city’s technology sector has grown a whopping 25% and accounts for 8% of city jobs. San Francisco with only an unemployment rate a bit over 5% is having an identity crisis.

Crisis in Affordability

Despite the city’s low unemployment rate; median rent is the highest in the country at $3.250 for a two-bedroom apartment with the median house price sitting at $850,000. The mix of tenant control, a growing technology sector and tenant protections has created a volatile mix. San Francisco with its high rent and prime real estate is giving landlords ammunition to evict those under rent control, finding lucrative contracts and profiting off the city’s archaic rent control laws.

Lucrative contracts and a volatile mix of rent control and tech money finds many businesses looking for new storefronts, while property owners are lining their pockets with new tech money and until rent control laws are modified this practice will continue to happen